Salad bowl for my nephew

Hi Everyone,

Well, the temperature outside is 65 degrees-perfect turning weather so here we go.

In my previous blog I mentioned a salad bowl that I was working on at the time my lathe broke down last year. It was to be a Christmas present for my nephew Michael. He's quite a fellow-he's swimmer and a lovely young man whose had some really difficult health issues over the past 5-6 years. He's come through that trying time with flying colors and amongst many other characteristics, he's a very healthy eater, hence the salad bowl.

The bowl began as a laminated block out of hickory and lyptus wood. It's about 11 inches in diameter and about 4 inches deep. I had finished turning it and I was sanding it when I stopped working on it. Today I picked it up again and here is a photo of it:

This is a closeup shot of the interior and if you look carefully you can see scratching inside of the bowl:

So I placed it on the lathe with the intent of finishing the sanding and getting the finish on it. I sanded it for about an hour and I barely made a dent in the scratching. If you look carefully below, you'll see the scratching is still visible on the surface:

I could re-cut the interior but after all these months, the bowl isn't perfectly round any more so that's not an option. It has to be sanded. So I decided to go ahead and put a coat of salad bowl varnish on the bowl with the idea that the varnish will dry and stiffen the wood fibers on the surface. Hopefully this will make sanding and smoothing easier to accomplish.

So that's what I did. This is a photo of the bowl at present. It doesn't look bad from a distance:

But a closer look shows the scratching on the surface:

So I'm going to let it dry for several days and then place it back on the lathe for more sanding. Stay tuned for more about this project.

VW